Prevention

Rafael Furcal tapped his knuckles on the armrest of his chair. "I can say that the only games I was forced to sit out this season had nothing to do with my back," he said. "I had an extremely complicated surgery. It wasn't easy to come back." Looking off into the distance, Furcal recalled his off-season workout program. He talked about the two rounds of special exercises he does every day to prevent a reoccurrence of the back problems that haunted him last season -- the first round, shortly after showing up at the ballpark; the second, after batting practice.

SACRAMENTO -- State Sen. Leland Yee, who was indicted recently for accepting payments for favors, promises in an official ballot guide arriving at voters' homes this week to “expose special interests, and prevent corruption.” Yee wrote the candidate statement for the voter guide before his March 26 arrest by federal authorities who have also accused him of conspiracy to traffic in firearms. The San Francisco Democrat paid to include the statement in voter guides as part of a candidacy for secretary of state that he has since abandoned.

Focus will help you sell a pension, manage your employees, raise your children and get a second date. If that does not go so well, it will also show you how to dump a suitor. Uncovering how people focus is the secret, says "Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence," published by Hudson Street Press. Written by Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins from Columbia Business School's Motivation Science Center in New York, it draws on social psychology and explores how to identify, change and use focus to get the desired results.

How much are childhood vaccines worth to America? Nearly $1.7 trillion, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That dollar figure represents the net savings of 20 years' worth of vaccines administered to American children born between 1994 and 2013 over their entire lifetimes, according to a report in Friday's edition of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. An estimated $295 billion worth of that savings comes in the form of direct costs averted, and $1.38 trillion is the estimated value of savings to society.

The recent announcement that a pill currently used to treat HIV infection can also help prevent it was an important milestone in the effort to keep people from getting the virus. The breakthrough utilizes a strategy known as pre-exposure prophylaxis. At-risk people take a drug in advance of exposure to the pathogen that makes it less likely they will become infected. The HIV drug's success in a Phase III trial is one of several recent breakthroughs in HIV prevention. None of the approaches, which also include a vaginal gel and an AIDS vaccine, is perfect, but all are promising.

The first effective vaccine against malaria made news earlier this month as scientists reported success in fighting the mosquito-borne illness that strikes 400 million people annually worldwide. In clinical trials in Africa, the vaccine prevented nearly half of new infections in children and reduced the number of serious cases by nearly 60%. But because more clinical trials are needed and manufacturing plants take five to six years to build, the new malaria vaccine isn't expected to be widely available until 2010 at the earliest.

WASHINGTON - On the heels of a fire season that burned more than 4,000 homes and killed 34 people across the country, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) on Tuesday called for a "saner approach" to preventing wildfires while budgets are strained as a result of fighting them. "It's hard to believe that while damages have soared, we're also spending more than ever to fight fires," Bennet said at a Senate Conservation, Forestry and Natural Resources subcommittee hearing. In the last six years, eight Western states have experienced the largest or most destructive fires in their histories, said James Hubbard, deputy chief of the Forest Service.

I just want to say "Bravo!" to the citizens who prevented Irvine from enacting a rifle/gun ban. The City Council obviously assumed it knows what's good for the people better than the people themselves and the authors of the Constitution. TED GREEN Huntington Beach

The Aug. 25 editorial, "When Orangewood Isn't Enough," focused on the plight of Orange County's neglected and abused children. However, you only briefly mentioned preventive measures that help stop the cycle of abuse. There are preventive programs in the county that do work. One such program is run by the Exchange Club Child Abuse Prevention Center of Orange County. This nonprofit group's goal is to break the destructive cycle of domestic violence and child abuse. Center volunteers, under the supervision of professional case workers, work with parents who are struggling with issues of abusive parenting, substance addiction and poverty.

Mary Bruitt saw the sign that read "Want to quit smoking?" and walked up to the table. She had been smoking for more than 30 years and had tried to stop before. But now, Bruitt said she was determined to give up the daily pack of cigarettes. "I got my teeth cleaned, and I want them to stay clean," she said, smiling. "You have grandchildren?" nurse Dior Hildebrand asked her. "Let's try to quit for them. " Bruitt, 62, came to the free clinic at the L.A. Sports Arena on Thursday morning for dental care.

Two drugs given to people who suffer migraines reduced the frequency of their headaches in early trials, scientists said. The test results “may potentially represent a new era in preventive therapy for migraine,” Dr. Peter Goadsby, an author on studies of both drugs, said in a statement. One of the researchers called migraine headaches the third most common medical disorder in the world. Both drugs must undergo larger trials to confirm the results. Both drugs are intended to prevent rather than treat migraine headaches, and the studies of them are the first to test monoclonal antibodies for migraine prevention, the scientists said.

The deaths of 15 people, including 12 volunteer firefighters, in an explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant a year ago were preventable, federal investigators said Tuesday. Preliminary findings from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board on the chemical disaster in West, Texas, include: The firefighters should have been trained to deal with the stockpile of ammonium nitrate at West Fertilizer Co. State regulators should not have allowed the fertilizer to be stored in wooden containers. Local authorities should have considered keeping schools and homes farther away from the plant.

OLATHE, Kan. - A self-styled white supremacist from Missouri appeared by video in a packed courtroom on Tuesday and was charged with capital murder in the killings of three people outside two Jewish facilities. Frazier Glenn Cross Jr., 73, was charged with one count of capital murder and one count of premeditated first-degree murder in connection with the Sunday shooting at a Jewish Community Center and nearby Jewish retirement home. If Cross is convicted of capital murder, under Kansas law, he could face the death penalty.

When three city officials were arrested trying to shake down a marijuana dispensary owner, Cudahy was branded a town where bribes were routine and elections were rigged. On Tuesday, state officials added one more indignity to Cudahy's battered reputation: a city with a staggering inability to keep an eye on public funds. In a damning audit, the state controller concluded that leaders in the working-class town used city-issued credit cards for excessive travel, meals and entertainment, mismanaged state funds and had virtually no internal controls to prevent the misuse of taxpayer dollars.

A new report from the blue-ribbon commission on Los Angeles County's safety net for abused and neglected children levels stinging criticism at the Board of Supervisors for a sluggish approach to reform, and declares that the system has fallen into a "state of emergency. " "Nothing short of a complete rethinking about how the county ensures safe and supportive care for abused and at-risk children will lead to the seamless and comprehensive child welfare system that the county has needed for decades," the commissioners wrote in a draft report expected to be approved in a vote Thursday afternoon. The members of the commission said the elected Board of Supervisors has responded too slowly and failed to identify a coordinated mission and clear, measurable goals for the child-protection system. The commission released its first set of recommendations in December.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to plug a financing gap that threatened community programs once paid for with federal dollars, devoting more than $1.9 million in reserves to help sustain programs that include neighborhood beautification and youth activities. The city has scrambled to figure out how to keep a host of programs running after the Department of Housing and Urban Development told the city it was violating rules governing federal grants, spending more of the federal funding than allowed on “public services.” To make sure that federal money for community redevelopment and renovation doesn't end up paying mainly for public services that cities would ordinarily cover on their own, federal rules cap the percentage of grant money that can be used for those kinds of services.

Re "State lags in listing staph rates," Feb. 24 This article notes that healthcare facilities can help prevent life-threatening infections with such "low-cost, low-tech measures" as "ensuring that staff disinfect their hands and use gloves or masks before treating patients." These steps are essential, but hospitals need to do more. The best tactic is to create a comprehensive, multi-step prevention program so that even persistent bacteria can't penetrate the multiple lines of defense.

I am writing in response to your Jan. 5 article about President Clinton's new national strategy to prevent teen pregnancies and provide $7.5 million to launch local programs that promote abstinence. President Clinton deserves praise for elevating teen pregnancy prevention to a national priority. During 1995, over 4,300 Orange County teen mothers gave birth and another 4,500 gave birth in San Bernardino County. Our communities should plan now to enhance the forthcoming abstinence programs with responsible sex education, which gives teens factual and honest information to avoid pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and AIDS.

Starting in her 30s, Barbara Schulties began suffering from debilitating headaches, which she describes as "someone taking a hot poker to my eye. " Besides excruciating head pain, the Santa Cruz resident lists a host of accompanying symptoms: nausea, vomiting, dizziness, difficulty focusing and hypersensitivity to light, noise and even wind on her face. "I can't spell," she says, describing a typical headache. "It's very hard for me to visualize words. " Like 12% of people in the U.S., and 1 out of 3 women over a lifetime, Schulties suffers from migraine disorder, an inherited condition that affects the regulation of nerve signals in the brain.

LONDON - Trying not to be penny-wise but pound-foolish, Britain announced Wednesday that it will ditch its venerable round 1-pound coin in favor of a new 12-sided model specially designed to foil counterfeiters. The new piece, to enter circulation in 2017, will maintain the nugget-like size of the current version, about the diameter of a U.S. nickel and nearly twice as heavy. But it will incorporate different-colored metals, for a faux gold and silver look, instead of the mostly copper blend now in circulation, and boast a high-tech anti-forgery feature used in paper money that remains shrouded in secrecy by the Royal Mint.